COMING SOON: What communities are learning from the fight against oil and gas pipelines

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline was canceled. The Dakota Access Pipeline is in limbo. A permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline extension was rejected by North Carolina regulators. 

The pipeline boom is on shaky ground, so Southerly and the Rural Assembly are working on a video story about what’s happening in rural communities who have spent years working to stop pipeline projects from being built.

Lyndsey Gilpin, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Southerly, will talk to Belinda Joyner, an activist in Northampton County, North Carolina who opposed the Atlantic Coast Pipeline; Becky Crabtree, a retired teacher, landowner, and activist in West Virginia who has protested the Mountain Valley Pipeline; and someone from the Southern Environmental Law Center, which had multiple lawsuits against the ACP. We’ll learn about the mistakes they made, the lessons they’ve learned, and the small and large victories they have celebrated. 

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline may be done, but it won’t be the last fossil fuel industry project proposed in rural America. If you’re in a place where an environmental hazard, industrial facility, or other project is planned — or where one has been built — we’d love to hear from you. 

What would you like to know about the six-year-long challenge against the ACP? Are you curious about permitting processes, eminent domain, or what you can do to learn more about potential projects in your area? Ask away! Send us your questions, and we may ask them in the interviews. 

Tweet at us: @southerlymag @ruralassembly @dailyyonder 

Or email us: lgilpin@southerlymag.org

Drawing Resilience: Maureen Hearty

Maureen Hearty transforms objects, space, and community, seeing art as a tool for action, education, and opportunity. The majority of her community-based work today is on the eastern plains of Colorado, considered one of the most sparsely populated areas in the United States. In Joes, Colorado (pop. 78), she is activating space using art, music, and the collection of story. In 2020, Maureen and her friend Kristin Stoltz were awarded an NEA grant for a project titled “Arts for a Prairie Seas: Farming Fluxus.”

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